Redimere anime. La Santa Casa della Redenzione dei cattivi a Napoli (1548-1599)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the first fifty years of a Neapolitan brotherhood, “Confraternita di Santa Maria del Gesù della Redenzione dei Cattivi”, while the Ottoman Empire reaches its apogee in the Mediterranean area. Especially, the Neapolitan court needs to respond to the sultan’s corsairs, which attack, each summer, the coasts of the kingdom. In response to this hard condition, Viceroy Pedro de Toledo supports the project of brotherhood in his correspondence with the Emperor Charles V. The Holy House of Naples is the first secular association with these ends in the Italian peninsula. Between 1598 and 1599, after many attempts, the brotherhood organizes a mission to Algiers, which is the most important slave market in the Barbary coast.